Word watch: Whom am I?

In a New York Times article about the U.S. Open tennis match between Sloane Stephens and Serena Williams, I was brought up short by a sentence beginning, “Just when Stephens stopped looking like a mentee and more like a threat to Williams is debatable …” Mentee? Well, there’s an interesting one, I thought. It apparently derives from the notion that a mentor is someone who ments, as an employer is someone who employs, so the person who gets mented must be a mentee just as the person who gets employed is an employee. But as students of Homer know, Mentor was the guy Odysseus entrusted with the education of his son, which is where our word mentor comes from. Ain’t got nothing to do with menting. A mentor doesn’t ment any more than a tenor tens, and his victim is not a mentee any more then the victim of a tenor is a tenee.

Still reading the Times on tennis, I found that Roger Federer, “who once seemed anything but beatable is now imminently so,” showing at once the fallibility of writers, copy editors and spell-checkers.

Sticking with the Times but switching to a crime story, I found, “each of the six defendants were linked to the crime through DNA evidence,” and of course that should be “each … was linked.” You don’t say “each were” – unless you’re distracted by an intervening plural and go off following it like a hound chasing an aromatic herring.

Not to pick on our most distinguished newspaper, I turned to our most distinguished magazine, The New Yorker, and read an informative article about the president of NYU, in the Sept. 9 issue. A fine article, except that it was pockmarked throughout with the deadening language of official euphemism: “struggling with substance abuse” for the straightforward being a drug addict; “spoke on the condition of anonymity,” from the AP playbook, for an official who doesn’t want his name used; “guest workers” for immigrant laborers; and more in that vein. Plus “for free” (two iterations) and “fourteen groups of faculty,” mistaking faculty for something countable, like peas. I recognize that “for free” is becoming more and more common, but it still makes me wince, since we don’t otherwise use an adjective as the object of a preposition, the only other example I can think of being the facetious “for real.” Indeed, “for free” was previously characterized in a stylebook that I admired as “comic book English.” To say one gets into a movie “for free” is no different from saying one gets in free, except that “for free” would have been preferred by the Katzenjammer Kids. But by The New Yorker? Saints preserve us.

Then there was the AP referring to a certain golf course as “the third course in as many years to host the second-oldest golf tournament in America,” which is tricky enough, but the formulation “in as many years,” so beloved of newspaper writers, is one that really ought to be retired. It’s accurate, if unnecessarily clever, to say someone had “three wives in as many years,” but it’s not accurate to compare a cardinal number (three) with an ordinal number (third) and say “the third course in as many years.” Third ain’t a many.

Dr. Whom, often in danger, but always prevails.

And that brings me down to the Daily Gazette, which reported, regarding the presence of a dead body in a welding shop, “police believe they have an idea as to whom the woman was.” Good for the police, I say, but do you have an idea as to whom you are? Or as to whom any of us are? Whom, indeed, am I? Whom, for that matter, knows the difference between who and whom? Tough questions! The mix-up that I see all the time is the use of “whom” (or “whomever”) when it is the subject of a clause but the entire clause is an object, for example, “I’ll give the diamond to whomever pays for it.” That should be “whoever,” because it’s the subject of “pays,” but the immediately preceding preposition “to” misleads. Another aromatic herring. As for “whom the woman was,” well, let us not guffaw too loudly at the blunder. No less a group of English language masters than the King James translators of the Bible bequeathed us the line, “Whom do men say that I am?” attributed to Jesus (Matthew 16:13). They could have moonlighted on the copy desk of the Gazette.

Finally I was struck by a recipe in an advertising supplement in the Gazette which called on me to “broil the fish under a salamander.” I consider myself a moderately adventuresome eater, but a salamander? I almost fell out of my seat. I pictured my prescribed Mediterranean sea trout with a sizzling pink lizard spread-eagled over it, and I thought I would have a hard time getting such a dish down. But that just goes to show how little I know. A a quick search taught me that a salamander, besides being a lizard-like amphibian encountered in the muck of Adirondack trails, is also “a culinary broiler characterized by very high temperature overhead infrared heating elements” (Wikipedia). So I learned something new, and now I’m going to rush out and buy one so I can cook my trout properly.

25 Responses

Since the Gazette eliminated copy-editing all but in name (at least on-line), it has become a wealth of humor. For instance this mixed metaphor, “Not long after Tropical Storm Irene plastered the Schoharie Valley with floodwater,” in a story published last Thursday. Of course, anyone who lived through the event knew what the reporter meant, but plastering anything with water certainly stops one’s eyes while reading – to say nothing of the thought of plastering a valley.

OK Carl, i see that you are still adept at finding hands to bite, but carefully avoiding the one that is currently feeding your ego, if not your wallet. The common grammatical faux-pas is as easy a beast to find now days as the proverbial fish in a barrel, and in nearly any publication, so i know an easy column when i see one.

You are much better when you ferret out malfeasance and
expose misconduct. As to biting old hands? A lazy and unseemly habit, that appeals, “Not so much”.

The Yankees and now “within” two runs of the Red Sox….
WRONG, if they were “within” two runs, they would be 1.9 runs or fewer behind. Within indicates “inside,” so….

And in your example, Carl, “the police believe they have an idea who(m) the woman was….” Really???
Wow, imagine that… cops “believing” that they have an idea…. and isn’t who(m) the woman was still who(m) she is not, only in an altered state.
Should be either: Police believe they know the identity of the dead woman, or
Police have an idea of the woman’s identity.”
It’s only because newspapers write how people talk in non-quote situations which makes how people talk acceptable.

Carl- You’re starting to …as the kids would say, “Go all Gran Turino” on us. If it makes you feel better to elevate yourself by being a “Grammar Police”, go ahead. There are “bigger fish to fry” in the world.

scalia, are you (perhaps under another name) one of those characters who post on Steve Barnes’ food blog and go to pieces when I correct absurdly sloppy English? You sound, at the very least, like the same type.

Carl has criticized absurd versions of the language in the Gazette for years. It’s a major thing of his, and also of mine.

If you’re going to raise holy Ned with him every time he does it, you’re going to make yourself and the rest of us very tired very soon.

I hope your name is not an indication of your personality or politics.

My favorite professor at U Albany, Harry Staley, now retired, may say that you are right about all these common faux pas (suddenly, there is a word I don’t know how to pluralize properly), but maybe something about it is good. Language is mutable. If it were not mutable, it would not remain alive and it would not evolve. Perhaps we might still be speaking Indo-European or Sanskrit today if it were strictly regulated. By the way, he felt strongly that there was no use for ‘whom’ and it should be done away with. ‘Who’ is perfectly fine for all uses.

Regarding embellishing things by putting in extraneous words or using multisyllabic words, a couple of comments. I was not a listener of G Gordon Liddy, but was within earshot when somebody else had him tuned in. Liddy said on that particular day that it is better to use a one-syllable word because it gets straight to the point. He may be right. Some situations don’t need me to wax poetic. George Carlin went into something like this in much greater detail with his famous bit about how “shell shock” from World War I became “battle fatigue” in World War II, then “operational dysfunction” in Korea, and then “post-traumatic stress disorder.” We went from two syllables that might even sound like the guns themselves to four, then eight, then eight with a hyphen. “I bet you if we were still calling it ‘shell shock,’ maybe those veterans would be getting the help they need.

The plural of faux pas is, surprisingly, faux pas! I never write sans dictionary & thesaurus next to me. It’s so much easier to look something up in a print dictionary than to save an email & go to an online dictionary!

English IS, indeed, evolving. “Virtual” has come to mean something very different than its original concept. And I fear the efforts of the Grammarian whose syndicated column runs in the TU, Sunday, re use of “literally” as somewhat a filler, are a losing battle. It reminds me of a dear friend of my mom’s whose favorite word was “right.” There were times where, after the 50th or so “right” I wanted to scream, Yes, Rose, it’s right!!!! She had no idea. Just as we have Orthodox Jewish friends who use “Nu,” as a sort of punctuation “Nu” begins, ends, fills a sentence!

Hi Carl–I had no idea you were blogging for the TU. I thought you were enjoying blissful retirement! (I’ve become my dad! You’ll get a kick out of this malapropism. The Troy Record once meant to say The gentleman referred to in the article was severely RETARDED. They said he was “severely RETIRED!” My dad was “severely retired.” I’VE become “severely retired!!!”
I don’t get to the blogs very often but now that I know youre blogging on the TU I will have to check. Always appreciated your Gazette columns.

Mentee is a legit word. I just checked my dictionary. A mentee is mentored by a Mentor. A little pretentious on the commenter’s part but I suppose they have to sound clever! I got my head handed to me once when I got too pretentious on Facebook & referred to a couple as a “dyad.” I save it for LinkedIn where my language & tone are more formal. It reminds me of a time in Navy Hospital Corps School when I used discrimination in a more formal sense–not in its usual pejorative sense. A Black classmate was offended & I learned to be careful how I was expressing myself. A wise Boot Camp armchair philosopher once said, “The mark of an educated man [substitute "person" now!] is to rise or lower himself to the conversation at hand. If you go somewhere & theyre talking about ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ (a legit word–medieval philosophy or religion I forget which) you talk anti, etc., etc. If you go somewhere & theyre f–ing this & f—ing that well, you f— this and f— that!”
Good to see youre as acerbic as ever! I will let Sean Kirst of the Syracuse Post Standard know youre blogging here. I met him at the State Fair & he knows of your Gazette columns. Dick Case who was their Carl Strock retired. (And the Post Standard is going down the toilet, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!)

Consider that if Carl argues against that word ‘mentee’ based on its origins, the counterpoint argument can be based on evidence that it is legitimate based on a mutability trend of the 20th century. It has become a common practice to adopt the ‘-er’/'-ee’ format to blend to other words which were not necessarily meant to have those meanings or be used in that way. That practice has been applied to ‘mentor.’ A creative mind contributed to the evolution of English by making this change. Anytime a word is coined, if both a speaker and listener understand the word and its meaning when it is used, that is what makes it legitimate. Incidentally, I write using dictation software. When I said the word ‘mentee’ as I was typing this comment, the word appeared on the screen and needed no correction. The word is legitimate enough to be included in a program which frequently demonstrates its ignorance.

The authority of dictionaries is not to command what is proper in the language. Their authority is intended as reporters of what exists in the common culture. You can invent a word today, and if that word starts showing up regularly in print and in conversations, editors of dictionaries eventually will find out about it. If the word remains in use, it will be added to the lexicon on which they report in their volumes.

I can’t recall hearing or reading any news reports of any words that have been retired from our language and dropped from dictionaries due to total lack of usage. Does anybody care anyway?

And what’s with the use of “each and every” as in ‘each and every day’, etc. A person I know and who teaches remedial grammar at a local college used a double negative in a sentence. When I pointed it out to him his response was that the purpose of communication is to get a message from one person to another. If that’s accomplished, that’s the bottom line. So much for the state of the English language in these United States of America.

Language evolves-it is supposed to, and we can’t chain ourselves to grammatical rules if usage has changed.

While there is a difference between formal academic writing and casual communication, I agree with Jerry’s friend, “the purpose of communication is to get a message from one person to another. If that’s accomplished, that’s the bottom line.”

Words do fall into obscurity and change meaning (gay=happy is a good one), and I predict that in a few generations, “whom” will fall by the wayside, as well a sreferences to the Katzenjammer kids and expecting your audience will know what you’re talking about (although I do remember them, from a history class).

Jerry / ann – Phrases such as “each and every” and “now more than ever” may seem cumbersome or unnecessary to you, but the purpose is to communicate an emphasis on whatever statement is being made.

Jango – You make a good point, but I think what Carl is bemoaning is the manner in which language is evolving and the troubling fact that a publication as respected as the NY Times has adopted (or at least permitted) some of the more detrimental changes. Detrimental, in a general sense, that not all changes are a good thing in that they bring down the aesthetic quality of writing and diminish the preciseness of communication. The proliferation of such juvenile and stupid words like “twerk” and “nom” by way of the internet is not something to embrace. To be sure, not all changes are necessarily bad, and I think his example of the use of “salamander” as a name for a type of cooking equipment is one of those positive developments. “Salamander” sounds a lot better than “overhead heating broiler” or whatever more technical term would apply.

Carl….start editing the on-line version of the T.U. PLEASE! It’s deplorable how many “obvious” errors of simple spelling appear and stay on the on-line version(which is so much easier to correct than the printed one– ha ha) even in the main articles, but the picture captions are the worst!! Let’s leave the syntax and grammar issues for another vent.

Carl, I have always enjoyed your Word Watch offerings, but I think your hungry fans need more meat (or at least whole grains) from their favorite curmudgeon. Nonetheless, I hope you saw that the Gazette used the word “ire” as a verb today (Sunday, Sept. 22), in its top front-page headline: “Debt-firm moves ire surprised Schenectady homeowners”. It irked me plenty.